New-niversity

I am so pleased with that punny title. Let's all take a moment to appreciate it.

*appreciation*

A thing has happened in my life. I thought it would be a scary thing, but it's not as bad as I imagined. I might even like it!

Frosh Week: Couch Carry (I'm the blonde girl on the right)

My life as a first year mechanical engineering student started four weeks ago and so far it was been going great. I participated in frosh week and got to do weird things, met friends and even made it on the local news! I don't know how it is wherever you are but here, the engineers are crazy and slightly full of themselves. Our frosh leaders painted their entire bodies purple since purple is our unofficial colour throughout many universities and we got to do weird activities such as a picture scavenger hunt with a couch.

This whole experience is exponentially different than high school! For one, I have 5 classes per semester (0 electives though, engineering is that kind of course.), not 4, and they happen sporadically throughout the week with 2 hour and a half lectures plus an optional but super helpful at times discussion and then a three hour lab on top of that for some courses. Making my schedule almost made me cry. Seriously, it was so hard to fit everything in and not have like five hour gaps or super early or late classes. But I managed to have an average of three classes per day, which is a crazy amount, especially compared to literally all my friends who are in some kind of arts program (communications, psych, history, etc.) and complain about their one day with three classes.

Woah, tangent. Anywho, other differences are not having set hours for class. For example, I managed to get most of my classes to start at 11:30am which lets me sleep in to a wonderful time and also get things done in the morning hours. And then there's the thing of my place of education NOT being under 10 minutes away anymore. I used to literally roll out of bed half an hour before class started and get there on time but now I have to check the bus schedules and plan my life around that. The bus takes about half an hour to get to university which isn't actually that bad compared to other people that live at home as well.

Speaking as a shy person, I was immensely pleased with myself for how many friends I made! I think it helped that nobody knew each other; the pre-made cliques were non-existent. Still, I was a little worried since I wasn't living in residence that I wouldn't make any friends but I managed to prove myself wrong. You end up talking to the people around you in your classes, usually just about the teacher and stuff, but then you walk out of class together and realize you have a break together and suddenly you're always sitting together and have each others' numbers and bang: friendship. And before you ask, those phone numbers are pretty much all girl numbers. Just because there's way less girls in engineering doesn't mean that I'm suddenly a hot commodity.

So this concludes my happy post. I'm sure everything isn't going to be this easy going for my full five years but I really don't mind it being this nice right from the beginning.

The Perks of Watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower

So I have just recently watched the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower. And my overall opinion of it is that it was pretty darn good!

A bit of background concerning myself and the movie: The movie is an adaptation from a book by the same name. I read it a while back, like 2007 or something and I have to admit, I didn't enjoy it back then. It's a more character-driven book and I mainly enjoy plot-driven books. It was a Slice of Life kind of book where nothing extremely exciting happened and the ending isn't really a resolution.

Side Note: The description that it's a "Slice of Life" kind of book was used by said friend's dad and I think it's just the most accurate thing on earth. I was silently having a moment of respect for how perfectly it fits this kind of book all the while carrying on normal conversation like a normal human being. You've got to be impressed by that. It takes a certain skill to be able to do that so gracefully.

Back to the present. It was really the casting that drew me to the movie. Logan Lerman has been a long favourite actor of mine since he's very good at it and doesn't hurt to look at. In the slightest. And then I was excited to see Emma Watson in something other than Harry Potter plus I also enjoyed her new haircut. And I have never seen a movie involving Ezra Miller but I have heard really good things about him. That was pretty much my reasoning plus my friend really wanted me to come see it with her so I obliged.

Stephen Chbosky is the author of the book and he also directed and wrote the screenplay for the movie. This was extremely evident because it stayed so true to the plot that even I remembered certain scenes from the book and I hadn't so much as thought of the book since I read it way back as a youngster. (Because the difference between youngster and not-youngster is 5 years. Write that down, it'll be on the test.) 

I have to say that I really enjoyed the movie. Maybe only because it was a movie and it keeps you visually entertained plus you don't have to go through the effort of reading the words in the book. (Not that I think it sucks; it's just mentally easier to watch a movie.) But I think it did a pretty good job of bringing the book to life. Can I say that Logan played the perfect Charlie. His voice, his mannerisms were so ideal it was scary. I'm pretty sure a lot of the deep stuff went right over my head but I really liked the vibe the movie gave me. It covered a lot of stuff kids go through in high school so it could reach people in certain things like that and it also was extremely funny at parts. So yeah, I enjoyed it.
If you haven't noticed, I'm pretty all over the place in reviews. All you need to know is that this one is a positive one and you should go see it.

Side Note: The one thing that bugged me was that Charlie did not look like a niner (this is what I call grade 9's) at all. He was taller than Sam and it looked like he could sprout a full beard at any second.